The Mandt System® Training Foundation

Over many years, The Mandt System® has received data from organizations using our programs. A significant reduction in aggressive and violent behaviors is reflected in that data, which can be found throughout the website. For clarification, The Mandt System, Inc is the name of our company, The Mandt System® is the Training Program, Curriculum and Services that we offer.

Training Foundation

The Mandt System® training courses are based upon the philosophy that all people have a right to be treated with dignity and respect, the right to personal identity, the right to normalization and the right to the least restrictive and most appropriate environment. We believe that all individuals should be seen as people first. Therefore, we believe that relationships should be based on principles in which people are allowed to participate in decisions about their lives. We recognize and consider people´s behavior, even negative behavior, as a form of communication. Our approach to relationships with people requires that we proactively meet the needs of others striving to improve relationships by learning to avoid repeating mistakes.

The Mandt System® program presents an education and training system of gradual and graded alternatives for de-escalating and supporting people, using a combination of interpersonal communication skills and physical interaction techniques designed to reduce injury to all the participants in an encounter.

Whilst the Relational, Conceptual and Technical (RCT) sections of The Mandt System® curriculum can be taught as building blocks of learning, it is these that collectively are referred to and required for Trainer Training in The Mandt System® Training Program.

Relational Level Training

Relationships are the context in which the work gets done. This statement is true not only in human service settings, but in almost every human endeavor concerned with production, achievement, or service. When people feel safe in the context of these relationships, they are freed up to commit themselves to the task.

We designed the Relational Chapters for you if you interact on a daily basis with people who, for the most part, are cooperative. We feel that the Relational Chapters provide an adequate level of interpersonal interaction skills for use in most of these situations. The most important part of any crisis interaction training is having the proper attitude and philosophy. Therefore, we stress the importance of de-escalating and interacting with people – not controlling them. If you can manage and control yourself, you can better interact with other people.

In the first three chapters, Relational Chapters, you will review what it takes to build Healthy Relationships in the workplace. These three chapters are the most important ones we teach!

Specific Chapter Detail can be found in the Program Information Sections

Conceptual Level Training

Remember that injury does not have to be physical. As children many of us said, “Sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me.” Truth be told, most of us were wounded far worse by words than any stick or stone that could be hurled. In the Relational chapters, you were introduced to the concepts of Interactions, Incidents, and Crises. The intention of The Mandt System® is to give you the tools needed to keep interactions at the interaction level. Therefore, the Conceptual Chapters now focus on using skills and competencies

We designed the Conceptual Chapters for you, if you interact on a daily basis with people who may become uncooperative. We feel that the Conceptual Chapters provide an adequate level of interpersonal interaction for use in most situations. We emphasize the use of a gradually progressive system of alternatives that involves the least restrictive means of interpersonal interaction.

Once healthy relationships have been established, there are four core competencies we want to give you so you can not only build healthy relationships but also use skills to address conflicts and meet unresolved needs. These next four chapters now focus on using skills and competencies.

Technical Level Training

We learned in the Relational chapters that treating people with dignity and respect was critical to the development of healthy relationships. The focus of the Relational and Conceptual chapters was on non-physical ways to treat people with dignity and respect in our interactions with them. We also focused on treating people with dignity and respect when an interaction became an incident.

We designed the Technical Chapters for you, if you interact on a daily basis with people who may become uncooperative and/or confused. We present a system of gradual and graded alternatives for de-escalating and managing people, using a combination of interpersonal communication skills and physical interaction techniques designed to reduce injury to all the participants in an encounter. The interpersonal skills from the Relational and Conceptual Chapters are reviewed and practiced, but emphasis is placed on learning appropriate physical skills while maintaining a high level of dignity and respect.

That same criteria must be present as we consider the possibility of an incident becoming a crisis. Just because there is a crisis and an increased risk of harm does not mean that we no longer treat people with dignity and respect. In these next chapters, we will focus more on teaching concepts than on teaching techniques.

(See detailed program information and FAQ for more detail on physical skills curriculum and safety standards)